Therapy
by Kyarorain
Summary: Brock attempts to get to the root of Paul's antisocial issues, with unexpected results.


**Therapy**

* * *

It's make fun of Paul time. I don't like him very much for that matter because he's such a jerk to everybody. This is what might happen if they decided to get to the root of his problems once and for all, and try to figure out what was making him so darn emo. It's not serious, not at all.

I do not own Pokémon. Game Freak and Nintendo have that honour.

* * *

Paul wildly struggled against the bonds that held him down to the chair, desperately attempting to break free. He cast an angry glare toward Brock, who was sitting in a chair and tapping a pen against a notepad as he watched him. They had been in this room for five minutes now and Paul had spent the entire five minutes thrashing about and yelling. Brock was simply waiting for him to calm down and start actually talking.

"Let me off this chair right now, you eyeless freak!" Paul shouted at Brock, understandably angry about the fact he was being held against his will.

Brock hung his head and sighed deeply. "I do have eyes, Paul," he stated in a weary voice, looking up at the younger boy. "Look, I don't usually do this kind of thing but everybody agrees that you need to get some help. Having taken care of nine younger siblings, I think I'm qualified enough to play therapist."

"I do not need help," Paul said in a withering voice. Of course he didn't need any help at all. He was a completely sane and normal human being, if being incredibly antisocial and insulting everybody in sight as well as enjoying beating the life out of his own Pokémon could be called sane and normal. "You had better let me go right now or I'll swear I'll get you arrested for kidnapping."

Brock smiled slightly in amusement. "Kidnapping? I wouldn't go so far as to call it that. Besides, your brother gave us permission to do this. He's agreed that you really do need it."

"He did?" Paul yelled in disbelief. Reggie was so dead.

"I want to help you, Paul," Brock said patiently. "Now, we are just going to have a nice, friendly chat. Why don't we start by talking about your childhood?" He paused, looking thoughtful. "Any traumatic childhood memories you might have?"

"Screw you," Paul hissed, looking away with a stubborn frown.

Brock exhaled noisily and rubbed his forehead. He wished he was being paid for this, but unfortunately he wasn't. This honestly didn't seem worth doing for free, but since everyone wanted Paul to stop being a jerk so much, he didn't have much choice in the matter. "Paul, please. It will be so much easier if you would just co-operate with me. I really do want to help you, but insulting me and telling me where to go is not going to do any good."

"I'm not talking to you." The younger boy sneered at him.

"Then we are going to be in this room for a very, very long time." Brock glanced up at the clock on the wall, suppressing a sigh. It was a good thing he was so patient otherwise he might just have given up by now. Paul wasn't the most tolerable person in the world sometimes. "Talk to me, please," he urged. "Everything that you tell me will stay inside this room. Nobody else will have to know, I promise."

Paul sighed in irritation. "FINE," he spat out loudly, "what do you want to know?"

"I want to know why you are so emo," Brock replied. "You are amazingly cold and unemotional, and you seem to take great pleasure in being cruel to others. There has to be a reason why you are this way and I would like to know."

"I'm not emo." Paul pouted, his eyes narrowing. He did have a traumatic memory, but he wasn't sure he could possibly even begin to think about it, let alone discuss it, without feeling great pain. "I do have a painful memory, but I don't want to talk about it."

"You need to face this traumatic memory, Paul," Brock told him. "Otherwise you may never be able to overcome it. Talking about it will surely help you. I know it must be painful, but you need to talk about it. Tell me."

Paul drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. "This one time, I met a man who asked me to have a Pokémon battle. We decided to have a six on six battle and he appeared to have really strong Pokémon. The man even told me that if I was able to beat him, then I could have cake. Oh, sweet, delicious cake."

Brock frantically scribbled away, struggling to keep up with Paul. His eyebrows were raised so high that they had actually managed to disappear beneath his short bangs.

"I did manage to beat him, but just barely," Paul whispered in a shaky voice. "I was so happy that I had managed to win and simply could not wait to have that lovely cake. I had been thinking about it the entire battle. It was amazing that I was actually capable of concentrating on the battle itself. I suppose it was the desire for the cake that helped me to win."

"Okay." Brock sensed there was a twist to Paul's absurd tale coming up. "Did you enjoy the cake?"

"The cake was a lie!" Paul screamed, bursting into frantic sobs. Brock sat back in surprise, stunned by the sight of Paul actually crying. "He never even expected me to beat him in the first place. I was trying so hard in the hope of eating sweet, lovely, delicious, wonderful cake and there was none... I never got any cake..."

Brock was silent, listening to the sound of Paul's wretched crying. "I did not see that coming. Not at all," he said slowly.

Paul looked toward him with wide, tear-filled eyes. "Do you have any cake?" he asked, sniffing.

"Er, you know what? I'm just going to let you go now." Brock hurriedly got up and went over to unstrap Paul.

Instead of leaving, Paul just clung to Brock's leg. "Can I have cake now?" he sobbed out.

Brock contemplated making Ash and Dawn pay for the ingredients. It would serve them right for coming up with this ludicrous idea in the first place. Either way, he couldn't bring himself to say no the crying boy attached to his leg.


End file.
